Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:55 am**

Actually, it’s even more complex than that model because humans have externalized digestive system complexity in favor of brain complexity. So, complexity of wood burned to cook seal or barley or depreciation of complexity of Potato chip factory would also have to be included in system.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:22 am**

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:55 am
depreciation of complexity of Potato chip factory

potato chip factory is the death of potato complexity

mmmm, mashed papa amarilla... wish i could get that here...

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:27 am**

Yeah, follows that eating factory potato chips leads to diminishment of human complexity compared to Ice Age guy found with 30 different species in his belly. Also probably analogous to how domesticated animals average 1/3 less brain weight than their wild ancestors. Also why anything resembling foraging is fun activity.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:32 am**

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 02, 2020 7:02 am
This growing tendency towards assortative mating in the U.S. is a huge change from mid-20th century when there was MUCH less correlation, likely because people married earlier and made decision more heavily weighted towards sexual attraction rather than educational or career success attainment. Luckily, although IQ is partially heritable, it is also quite sporty (will frequently pop up unexpectedly), or results of meritocracy would be even worse.

I remember reading about this in, I think, one of Ross Douthat's books--maybe his most recent about decadence. In anecdotal terms (which are what I rely on to understand concepts), it's that executives don't really marry their secretaries anymore (actually, most executives don't even have secretaries anymore). With a 2-income household, there's naturally more of an emphasis on marrying someone of a similar educational/career prospect level. And while there are certainly pros to this kind of emphasis, there are lots of cons as well.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:36 am**

Ditto domesticated humans ... OTOH, brain weight isn't everything, apparently. It is interesting to realize just how far back the progress trap goes.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:06 am**

Yeah docility in an adult human usually correlates directly with stupidity. OTOH, civility in an adult human usually correlates directly with intelligence and outsourcing violence. OTOOH, feigned docility in an adult human might also correlate directly with intelligence, see B’rer Rabbit, Tom Sawyer, Moll Flanders, etc.

BTW, I just read that Google’s AI solved the protein folding problem. Any day now...

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:12 am**

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:27 am
Yeah, follows that eating factory potato chips leads to diminishment of human complexity compared to Ice Age guy found with 30 different species in his belly. Also probably analogous to how domesticated animals average 1/3 less brain weight than their wild ancestors. Also why anything resembling foraging is fun activity.

I would have said anything resembling hunting.
My brother (a cop) once said something alike :"i'de rather be hunthing mamoth, but they are gone, so i'll take your driver license"

My long canceled favorite youtuber spent a lot of time comparing wild animals (including humans) with their domesticated variant. I cannot say if i agreed because he was right, or because of my archaic features.
The only way to get back to hunting, is to be able to defend a hunting territory with only the ressources that hunting on it provides.
Or to be granted this privilege (like natives in canada) by an entity that control this territory with other ressources.
If everyone had this pursuit, climate change would be solved. And one could argue that reverting to paleolithic is extremely conservative.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:45 am**

Foraging and hunting both offer primitive thrills. I think the main difference is something like relative dopamine vs testosterone and whether visual center is more sensitive to color vs movement. One of the reasons I love gardening is that you can set your own stage for high bliss foraging experience. Department store shopping is just too easy.

Good point that you would have to defend hunting territory with only resources found/made on hunting territory. Only other functional model would require slipping through the net of dominance. For instance, the woman I read about in a book on suburban foraging by a writer for Outdoors magazine. She would simply sneak up and choke Canada geese in an urban park setting and then hide them in a bag while riding on the bus. I wish I was that brave.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:53 am**

nomadism and adventure also offer primitive thrills and it’s more fun to track the herds than stay put in the same old damn patch.

reconsidering something i said above to @hb: while my wife did feel homesick for new mexico my personal payoff coming here was “let’s go see what’s out there!”

i come from a long line of nomads. it’s hardwired.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:56 am**

Re: Canadian goose strangling, a little while ago I heard of a fancy, farm-to-table type restaurant that had a good bit of social media cancelling-type blowback because, after hours, some restaurant employees had nailed a small dead animal skin/carcass to a board outside next to the on-site veggie garden--either because they were just being stupid, or because they thought it might scare away veggie garden intruders, or some combination of both. The dead animal was likely one the restaurant had ordered from a local farm, skinned on site, and then used in dishes at the restaurant (it's that kind of restaurant). Anyway, my initial reaction to your Canadian goose-strangling woman was to think: "Oh my that's so cruel." But then I realized I was being just as compartmentalized and naive in my thinking as all those people who got SO upset on social media about the "cruelty" of what the restaurant workers had done--many swearing they would NEVER eat at the restaurant again.

Anyway, not sure what the direct link is to the stated topic; perhaps this belongs more on @alphaville's food and CC thread--but, seems related.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:57 am**

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:56 am

Anyway, not sure what the direct link is to the stated topic; perhaps this belongs more on @alphaville's food and CC thread--but, seems related.

hah, yeah, gets confusing, we were talking housing in the food one, idk where we @ anymore.

-

i always thought if i became homeless i’d get a slingshot & eat winged rat.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:01 am**

Well, DD is learning about ecosystems in school and she asked me for an explanation of what that means. My explanation involved linking humans, our food consumption, our energy consumption, our housing, and our waste management practices; so, there you go. Probably not the explanation she was looking for, but, that's what happens when you ask your conservative hippy dad (Birkenstocked Burkean) for an example of an ecosystem.

ETA: Ha! I knew I'd heard that expression somewhere before: https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/07/ ... od-dreher/

Posted: **Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:40 am**

jacob wrote: ↑
Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:28 pm
FWIW, Biden's win means that the US will almost surely rejoin the Paris Agreement, which the US otherwise ultimately abandoned just a few days ago, likely on the first day in office. What this means is that global foundation for an attempt at a mitigation solution will at least remain in place for the world's nations to try to negotiate an agreement (Paris 2?) with teeth. In short, the Biden win makes a globally coordinated mitigation solution possible in theory (having lost only 4 years), whereas a Trump win would have permanently sunk the agreement and reduced the world to national adaption plans due to having run out of time to restart the entire process a few years from now (a loss of 1-2 decades).

However, it's my understanding that the PA was originally ratified by executive order and what EO's give they just as easily take away again. The likelihood of US congress actually signing it into law under a bipartisan agreement seems small?? US states with intensive mining industries are deeply opposed to any regulation that would cut material amounts of jobs(*). W/o bipartisanship it seems likely that rejoining will be an EO again unless Georgia's senate run-off will resolve in favor on the Democrats as this would create a 50-50 split in the senate with the VP having the decisive vote. The likelihood of this resolution is rather low though.

Well it seems that both predictions have come true, but does that mean a bipartisan climate agreement is coming? So far it seems like mostly executive orders.

I’ve seen a lot of reporting on how the Biden administration wants to roll out new CC policies, but it’s difficult for me to ascertain whether the proposed policies will have any substantive effect. It mostly seems to be way too little way too late. The focus is not really on reducing consumption or energy expenditures (of course not because that would require us to restructure our economy), but rather on just shifting all consumption to “green” tech.

“Tackling climate change did not mean a diminishment of lifestyle, such as driving less or not being able to eat meat, he said. The Biden administration, mayors and other local leaders will have to persuade Americans that curbing climate change “can be the greatest economic transformation in global history,” Kerry said.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN29S0PA

We’ve got a long way to go, but I guess this is a step closer than the previous administration.

Posted: **Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:02 am**

white belt wrote: ↑
Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:40 am
“Tackling climate change did not mean a diminishment of lifestyle, such as driving less or not being able to eat meat, he said. The Biden administration, mayors and other local leaders will have to persuade Americans that curbing climate change “can be the greatest economic transformation in global history,” Kerry said.”

Even the Green party in the UK keep pushing this message.

From: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 19.1598964

We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.

Posted: **Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:38 am**

Well, I saw this come across my news feed a couple days ago (https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/eco ... fed7d.html); and, admittedly, I was originally curious whether this was another Yes Men prank: https://grist.org/article/2009-10-19-ch ... -men-hoax/

Posted: **Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:34 pm**

Hristo Botev wrote: ↑
Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:01 am
Well, DD is learning about ecosystems in school and she asked me for an explanation of what that means. My explanation involved linking humans, our food consumption, our energy consumption, our housing, and our waste management practices; so, there you go. Probably not the explanation she was looking for, but, that's what happens when you ask your conservative hippy dad (Birkenstocked Burkean) for an example of an ecosystem.

ETA: Ha! I knew I'd heard that expression somewhere before: https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/07/ ... od-dreher/

I've never heard this before, but since this describes my wife and I to a T, I think I'll be stealing it

.

Posted: **Sat Jan 30, 2021 4:35 pm**

Recent profile on Peter Kalmus, author of Being the Change.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... if-you-try

I found the most interesting part is the interaction with his wife and kids. They don't want to comply with his desired lifestyle and stage mini acts of rebellion like using excessive hot water, still travelling by plane and using air conditioning. Some of it seems to be at least due to his portrayed communication style (or lack thereof) but interesting nonetheless. He seems to encounter many of the same issues in explaining like some of us do here when trying to explain ERE.

Posted: **Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:12 pm**

@theanimal - Yeah, also see https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a ... ists-0815/ I think I've managed the internal/external conflict better in practical or at least the portrayed terms which might not reflect reality

Leopold wrote: One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

I think experience with the Wheaton/Keagan models definitely helps that way, so I feel like reaching out, when I read accounts like that.

In any case, it's definitely an issue.

Posted: **Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:29 pm**

@Animal

That article demonstrates why I think Jacob’s strategy of providing a carrot in the form of Early Retirement is more effective at convincing people to change then just repeating climate change data to them. It’s kinda like you’re not going to convince someone to lose weight by just telling them the negative health consequences of their actions.

Posted: **Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:42 pm**

Yes, I agree that knowing about wheaton levels makes a big difference. Jacob, you have become better and better over the years in communicating your ideas and I think part of it could be attributed likely to that. The mistake that's often made is not only not realizing there are levels of understanding but also that others are at levels different than oneself. From the article, Kalmus is very upset by the behavior of his family and climate activists elsewhere. But it is likely that the vast majority those same people haven't spent as much time looking at models like he has or have the comprehensive understanding from his years studying the problem. Getting frustrated because they are not acting in a desired manner is a fruitless endeavor as they don't have the understanding to realize why it's such a big deal in the first place.

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